Taking books to needy, this rationalist exposes miracles in superstition-infested Gujarat society

By Rajiv Shah 

I knew his name as a campaigner against the sheer wastage of the large amounts of ghee brought by devotees from across India for a major religious ceremony conducted every year in Rupal village, near Gandhinagar, the Gujarat capital, on the ninth day of Navratri. I had seen him at several places during my visits to different NGO meetings as well as some media conferences.

Paradoxically, I could never connect the name—Lankesh Chakravarti—with his face until very recently, when I contacted him to take away my book collection for a library he had set up in what seemed to be a Dalit locality in Odhav, an Ahmedabad suburb, about 20 kilometers from where I live. This followed my frantic search for someone who could take the books we had collected over the last several decades.

While some books relevant to researchers and scholars were taken by the librarian from the Gujarat Institute of Development Research (GIDR) and a faculty member of Nirma University, who came to my house with Biswaroop Das, a retired professor from the Institute of Social Studies, Surat, and a close friend since my college days, fiction and a few other books remained.

I was advised to contact Sukhdev Patel, whom I know more as a very dedicated child rights activist despite his stint in politics as the Aam Aadmi Party chief of Gujarat, which I readily did. Patel suggested that the best person for this purpose would be Chakravarti. I contacted him, and he readily agreed to take all my books for the library he had set up.

Chakravarti came to my residence, and I asked him if he would take even English books, though Odhav is a place where it would be difficult to find an English-reading public. He said, "Yes, I will take the books you don’t need. There are places in Ahmedabad where people set up small voluntary libraries, and they need English books. I give such books to them."

I was happy to have finally found someone in Chakravarti who would take my entire book collection, which wasn’t small. I never counted them, but they must have numbered over 1,000.

Frankly, I was never a voracious reader. I have been more interested in going through research studies, papers, and books containing studies relevant to writing articles or news stories. As for fiction, though I have read some, despite being a student of English literature, I haven’t read much lately. Not that I’m uninterested in fiction, but I generally prefer watching serious films instead.

As we talked, Chakravarti’s name intrigued me. I asked him, “Why Lankesh, the other name for Emperor Ravan of Ramayana?” He explained that he had changed his original name, which he doesn’t disclose. “First of all,” he said, “nobody keeps names like Ravan or Duryodhan. But more importantly, I believe names per se are not bad. A name should not define a person’s character. For instance, those named Ram aren’t necessarily good human beings with high moral character. Many Rams are known to be criminals.” As for the surname he chose, Chakravarti, it means "emperor". He forwarded me an article published in 1988 in Gujarati explaining his name change.

Books and libraries are not Chakravarti’s only passion. He runs the Gujarat Rationalist Association, which seeks to expose Hindu and Muslim babas who, he says, deceive people with so-called magic. “Such babas seduce people by showing tricks. We organize meetings in different communities, performing these tricks and explaining how they are done,” he said.

“We hold performances across Gujarat. It was us who exposed the superstitions surrounding witchcraft used to deceive tribals in the Shamlaji temple area in North Gujarat. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad cadres tried to create a ruckus and stop our campaign, calling it an insult to Hinduism. Some of us were injured. The main question is: Why deceive people in the name of religion?”

In these performances, he explained, a Gujarat High Court lawyer, Piyush Jadugar, “acts as a baba deceiving people, while I explain to the audience how the tricks are performed to expose superstition.” A major campaign he conducts every year is on Kali Chaudash, one day before Diwali. On this day, superstition claims ghosts appear at night at cremation sites. On Kali Chaudash, he and other rationalists visit cremation sites to debunk the superstition. “Thousands gather to watch our campaign,” he claims.

The miracles exposed on different occasions include piercing a trident into the body, walking on burning embers, removing coins from hot oil with bare hands, pulling chariots with hooks inserted into the body, tying heavy stones to the back, and making deities appear.

Noticing my interest in his campaigns, he handed me a Gujarati book explaining his initiatives. I asked if the book was available online, as I wanted to preserve it for future reference. He replied in the negative. A thought crossed my mind: the failure to run such excellent anti-superstition campaigns online, including on social media, is one reason why NGO representatives struggle to reach a wider audience in the modern era, especially those who have not yet been contacted.